Lawmakers want fuller accounting of benefits to Tsarnaev families

epublican leaders in the House and Senate on Wednesday asked the Patrick administration to compile detailed information on the type and amount of public assistance benefits paid to the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings.

Republican leaders in the House and Senate on Wednesday asked the Patrick administration to compile detailed information on the type and amount of public assistance benefits paid to the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings.

House Minority Leader Brad Jones said he contacted the Executive Office of Health and Human Services to request that the administration dig deeper into the welfare assistance provided by Massachusetts to dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his family in the years leading up to the April 15 terror attack.

Jones also asked the Department of Transitional Assistance to verify whether all family members met eligibility requirements when applying for public benefits.

"The findings of the investigation are vitally important in assuring that taxpayer subsidized benefits are being acquired and used in an appropriate manner," Jones said in a statement Wednesday.

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr joined with Jones, calling it "angering to see that those who perpetrated such a merciless and cowardly act of terrorism had been receiving state benefits funded by public dollars."

"By investigating further, the Executive Office of Health and Human Services will be able to identify any possible failings of the welfare system that may have otherwise been left undiscovered," Tarr said in a statement. "Following the wake of destruction, death, and injuries that has impacted our state that these two men have caused, no stone can be left unturned in understanding how and why these events occurred."

Health and Human Services spokesman Alec Loftus confirmed Wednesday the families of bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were recipients of public welfare assistance. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who lived in Cambridge, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was a student at UMass-Dartmouth, received benefits through their parents when they were younger.

Loftus said that the Tsarnaevs’ parents were former recipients of transitional assistance benefits and that separately Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his family received benefits until 2012, "when the family became ineligible based on their income."

"The brothers were not receiving transitional assistance benefits at the time of the incident and have not received any transitional assistance benefits this year," he said.

Asked Wednesday about the duration and amount of benefits received by the Tsarneov families, Loftus did not provide that information and indicated he did not expect to have any further details to release.

Over the course of the first two days of debate on the House budget proposal, Republicans have repeatedly hammered Democrats for raising taxes at time when they say $1.8 billion is being spent annually on benefits to recipients they say are undeserving.